Contact companies in your niche and ask them if they would like to sponsor a prize for a blog post you are planning that is related to their product.

I have found incredible success with this method. Most of the companies that I contact are very keen to have their products promoted for free and accept very readily.

When I run the giveaway I get my readers to enter on a form - then I have their details to add to my email list - bonus!

Then I also add that they can have an extra entry for adding a comment on the blog post giving their thoughts about the post (Bonus comments!) and I mention that they get another entry for sharing my post on social media using certain hashtags - I have one hashtag that I use for promoting my own competitions. I can also include a hashtag for the company to promote their campaigns!

This is an amazing way to gain subscribers to my list, to create excitement on social media and extra traffic to my website, to get comments on my website and get social shares and hashtag marketing all done for me.

It costs nothing at all except a little work.

The big bonus is that through these competitions other companies contact me to run competitions too... so I reply with my media kit and rate card! See where this is going?